The one step that virtually every potential client has taken before they contact me about a new project is registering their domain name. I can understand the feeling of wanting to grab that name as soon as you have the idea for a new project. I have a few domain names for “some day” projects in reserve myself. But some registration companies are easier to work with than others, so the choice you make in registering can have an impact on the cost and flexibility of your project. If you have a new website idea, here are some ideas about where to register the name:

Low cost, easy to use: DomainSite
I started using DomainSite (also known as Name.com) because of their $8.88 registration cost, but stayed because of their no-fuss administration tools. In just a few minutes, I can log in and redirect my domains or email from one server to another, and I like being able to renew my domains without clicking through pages of “special offers” for other services I don’t need. DomainSite is a small company based in Denver and I’ve since gotten to know some of the employees by name, which is nice.

Big name, easy to use: Register.com
If you’re more comfortable with an older, bigger, higher-profile company, I suggest Register.com. I used them for years and some of my clients still do. Their control panel isn’t as straightforward as DomainSite’s, but it gets the job done and I’ve learned some of the tricks of using it. Register.com still uses the base $35/year price for domains, which was standard before smaller companies came in offering lower prices. That’s fine if you have one domain, but if you end up registering lots of them, you’ll start to feel the price difference.

Low cost, hard to use: GoDaddy
Among the aforementioned smaller companies with lower prices, GoDaddy is the most popular. However, they’ve come to offer so many different add-on services that it can be difficult to find domain registration info on their site. Whenever I need to change your domain settings, I have to click through pages after page, and popup window after popup window, to find them — and then I get logged out and have to start over after a few minutes of inactivity. I charge by the hour, so this is not in your best interest. Besides, Mr. Daddy — do you really need race cars and cleavage to sell domain names?

Big name, hard to use: Network Solutions
Rounding out my list is the original, big name registrar, which we used to affectionately call NetSol. Now they’ve taken on the worst of both worlds — the cost of Register.com plus the complexity of GoDaddy. Actually, Network Solutions isn’t much harder to deal with than Register.com, but last time I used them, it took 24 hours for domain changes to take effect — during which time the affected sites were completely unavailable. I don’t know if that was just a fluke, but I’d rather not try it again.

There are many registrars out there, but of those I’ve used, I would recommend DomainSite or Register.com and stay away from GoDaddy and Network Solutions. As for the next step of purchasing web hosting — that’s even more important, so let’s wait until we start our project!

I’ve always been fanatical about backups, based on the mantra that in the computer age, one should never have to do the same work twice. My standard policy is that I keep all project files in a version control system, back up my computer daily, and make an offsite backup monthly. This works great with the development model where I create all the files in a website on my computer, then upload them to the remote server. My computer is, essentially, the master copy and the server files are secondary.

When my favorite hosting company had an incident recently, losing data for two of my clients’ sites, I realized that this model is quite outdated. Modern websites consist of much more than the developer’s files. With a content management system, my clients are adding content and files from different locations that are only collected in one place on the server. And with a social networking site, users are adding content constantly, without which the site would be worthless. Without an automated backup of the site’s database and root directory, replacing content added by the clients is time-consuming, and replacing content added by users is impossible.

My solution is a new system I’ve created for my clients. It allows me to configure automated backups of the database and the root directory, at different intervals if needed, as frequently as once per hour. I and/or my clients can receive email notifications of every backup, and every backup failure. The backup files are saved at a different datacenter than any of the sites, and are available to clients any time at a password-protected web page. Clients can even log in and run a manual backup at any time.

This should bring my backup strategy up to the level of my current website development. I can’t say I’m looking forward to using it, but I do like knowing it’s there!